POETRY / Take me to a hibiscus field won’t you
13 December 2024, 18:00 PM
POETRY / Our Bangla
13 December 2024, 18:00 PM
THE SHELF / Pages for freedom: Book recommendations for Victory Day
13 December 2024, 18:00 PM
Alice Munro, Canadian Nobel Prize-winning author, dies at 92
14 May 2024, 17:26 PM
POETRY / Be a tree
15 March 2024, 18:00 PM
FICTION / The loss of essentiality
15 March 2024, 18:00 PM
POETRY / THE OTHER WAY ROUND
8 December 2023, 18:00 PM
POETRY / Soldier amidst the blood moon: An elegy
8 December 2023, 18:00 PM
ESSAY / Ludic space for Tagore’s fictive children
8 December 2023, 18:00 PM
POETRY / They raise their fists. Inside, I fall asleep to the sound of rain
1 December 2023, 18:00 PM
Hand kerchief
A hawker was constantly nagging in front of me for buying a handkerchief. It was only 7.30 am in the morning and yet the sun was ready to burn the entire world with its rage.
1 November 2019, 18:00 PM
How dare you!
‘How dare you!’ She poured molten lead into my ears, the moment I had proposed to her. I stopped right there. More than a decade has passed since then.
1 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Tears of Dying Calm
I separate the bleeding stars
25 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Sit Down, Sir!
Gulshan Market Two has not changed much over the last three decades. Surrounding three sides of an open parking lot, it is a square, U-block construction, with a colonnade veranda running along the front of each shop. Some of the shops are new, but most are what they had been when Rita was a teenager.
25 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Play Dough
“And brown for my hair,” muttered Mustafa to himself. He was engaged in his favorite pastime surrounded by a splendid array of multi-colored play dough.
25 October 2019, 18:00 PM
The Mona Lisa of Bengali Poetry: Jibanananda’s “Banalata Sen” (Part II)
Ms Banalata Sen is mentioned thrice, at the end of each 6-line stanza, and each time the effect, in the context of the stanza’s affective and ideational development, is climactic.
25 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Did we need two Booker Prize winners?
After six months of reading 151 books longlisted into 11, narrowed down further to six, the Booker Prize judges on October 14 announced this year’s winner—the “best novel” produced in English in the UK and Ireland (regardless of the author’s nationality) over the past one year.
24 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Editor’s Note
Jibanananda Das is probably one of the most read and yet the most neglected poets of Bengal. There is indeed a dearth of critical reading of his work, too.
18 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Jibanananda Das: Poetics, Politics, Political Economy
Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language. His poetry in particular has already made possible a staggering range of interpretive adventures and hermeneutic excavations, although he wrote 21 novels and 110 short stories that were discovered after his death.
18 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Jibanananda and Barishal
What is Barishal known by? One hundred years back, the unfailing answer was “rice and river.” Half a century ago, the answer might have been a political name- Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq.
18 October 2019, 18:00 PM
The Mona Lisa of Bengali Poetry
The process of reading is consummated in rereading. It is sure to deepen and broaden our understanding of the work and its author, and quite possibly of ourselves as well.
18 October 2019, 18:00 PM
To a Pained One
Now late at night you have a bed
18 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Knocks
Would a few doors remain closed?
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
A Requiem for Amazonia
Amazon burns
Each flame licks a life
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
A translation of Syed Manzoorul Islam’s short story, “Kathpoka”: Woodworms (Part II)
“I’m doing what I feel like doing. What’s that to you?” Aslam retorted. He opened the door and said, “Like mother, like daughter. Get lost.”
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Things I Thought I Thought Tonight
They have given me a grilled piece of chicken and a naan with the face of moon on a plate. The grilled chicken leg is brown with sides turned to dark coal. Grains of burnt spices glaze the piece.
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Is Writing a Gift?
If it is, where is this gift coming from? God? Ahem! As off-putting as it might sound, biographies and autobiographies of writers reveal that most so-called gifted writers are scoundrels.
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
A Villager’s Guide to Feeding Foreigners
If you’re a straightforward villager like me, you’ll be curious to entertain the foreigner. Before you do there are things to consider. Foreigners have foreign ways; allowances are required. Yet, despite the inherent challenge it’s good to feed one. Even foreigners need to eat.
4 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Woodworms (Part 1)
It’s been three nights that Aslam hasn’t been able to sleep. He has been trying so hard to fall asleep on the divan for three nights – the divan that he fancifully got carpentered and laid out in the study room of his gigantic apartment in Bashundhara, for the specific purpose of lying down to read and eventually doze off.
4 October 2019, 18:00 PM
For Life on Earth
Like melting chocolate
Earth melts into angel-smoothe
4 October 2019, 18:00 PM